Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Electric and hydraulic elevators have been used extensively for many years to transfer people and/or goods from one building floor to another. A traditional approach in maintaining elevator safety is to conduct routine maintenance and perform periodical examinations, which rely heavily on operator-controlled alarming systems during elevator troubleshooting. Since different elevators may be operating under different loading conditions, resulting in different degrees of wear and tear, these routine examinations may fail to detect hidden faults caused by long term usage. Further, many of the periodical examinations lack specific objectives, and a thorough examination of an elevator can be costly in terms of time and labor.
Moreover, many elevator safety systems focus on damage reduction rather than accident prevention. Thus, when an elevator malfunctions, the passengers of the elevator can only rely on the emergency braking system of the elevator to reduce potential injuries or property damage. The passengers are not warned in advance.